Volusia County Council may change tourism appointment process

The changing boundary lines of the Volusia County Council's districts is changing the way it appoints people to Volusia's three regional advertising authorities that market the area to tourists.

ANDREW GANTSTAFF WRITER

The changing boundary lines of the Volusia County Council's districts is changing the way it appoints people to Volusia's three regional advertising authorities that market the area to tourists. When the new council is sworn in at the beginning of 2013, one of the members early jobs will be to adjust or restructure the nomination method for the Halifax Area Ad Authority, Southeast Volusia Ad Authority — two boards that have been in the news often lately — and the West Volusia Tourism Ad Authority. "At a minimum, every council member should have at least one appointment," said Councilman Josh Wagner, who has been advocating for a change as soon as the new council members arrive. Here's how it works today: The at-large council member (Joyce Cusack) and county chair nominate most of the appointments for all three boards. Then the council votes to approve those names. It's usually a noncontroversial process. The district representatives get fewer picks, and only if part of the ad authority sits within the district boundaries. Wagner, for example, gets to make one nomination each for the HAAA and SVAA boards, but not the WVTAA. District 5 Councilwoman Pat Northey gets to nominate someone for the WVTAA and the SVAA, but not the HAAA. With the council district lines recently redrawn, though, some districts no longer overlap the ad authority borders the same way. That means the council, if it keeps the same policy, will have to reallocate the picks. District 1 and District 3, which used to contain part of the HAAA district, don't anymore. Wagner and incoming District 4 rep Doug Daniels would get those extra nominations. And similar changes would occur at the WVTAA, where incoming District 3 rep Deb Denys would get a pick and Cusack would lose one. Daniels would lose his pick for the SVAA and give it up to Cusack. "This nomination system should be revised either to conform to the reasoning upon which it is based or to some other preferred rationale," County Attorney Dan Eckert wrote in a recent memo to the council and council members-elect. Wagner is making a case for the "other" — for all council members to have nominations in every ad authority, regardless of location. He's argued the district council members, while elected by a segment of the county, still represent all of Volusia in office. "That's what we hear all the time — that's what everyone says," he said. "And here we have one (policy) that doesn't actually follow that mindset." The ad authority board seats, while unpaid and limited in power, can be high-profile positions. The ad authorities use bed-tax money collected from hotels and other rentals inside the district to market the area to more tourists. Their budgets range from $6.1 million at the HAAA to $2 million at the SVAA to $300,000 at the WVTAA. Recent appointees have included Nicole Carni in 2008, who eventually became the SVAA board's chairwoman and then its executive director before she was removed amid an investigation of misused money. Two other board members who supported her resigned. The HAAA board made a major change last year when it fired Daytona Beach Convention and Visitors Bureau executive director Janet Kersey and brought in Jeff Hentz. The board's former chairman, Ted Doran, was prominent in that move and followed it by running a controversial campaign for county chair. Other HAAA appointments have been contentious, too: When Cusack nominated Ridgewood Avenue hotel owner P.M. Patel, Daytona Beach's police chief raised allegations about reports of drugs and prostitution in and around the property. The current board members' terms expire on March 31, so the council will have to make a decision on how to make its nominations before then.